What does the finalized TikTok deal mean for what users see on the app?
The deal keeps TikTok available for 200 million users across the U.S.
TikTok struck an agreement to establish a U.S.-based version of the app, rescuing the social media giant from legal peril and ensuring continued access for 200 million users nationwide, the company said late Thursday.
The deal, which forms a new U.S. TikTok under majority control of American investors, ends a yearslong battle that had pitted the U.S. and China, the world's two largest economies, against each other in a struggle for control of the fast-growing media titan.
The conclusion of the standoff, however, sets in motion an uncertain transition for the influential platform, experts told ABC News.
U.S.-based users may eventually notice some differences in the content feed after the agreement, experts said. But, they added, it remains unclear exactly how the deal may alter what the app presents in its endless scroll of short videos.
The deal seeks to comply with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in September, which ensured American investors would own the majority of TikTok's U.S. operation.
U.S. TikTok will be overseen by a seven-member, majority-American board of directors, including TikTok CEO Shou Chew, the company said.
Trump celebrated the deal in a social media post on Thursday.
"I am so happy to have helped in saving TikTok! It will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World, and will be an important Voice," Trump said.
Scrutiny has centered on the fate of TikTok's algorithm, a proprietary formula that fuels the attention-grabbing social media platform.
The finalized deal this week appeared to grant the newly formed company some control over the algorithm, but the precise details remained murky, experts said.
Under the agreement, U.S. TikTok "will retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data," the company said on Thursday.
In theory, experts said, TikTok's U.S. operation will retain the underlying algorithm created by China-based TikTok-parent ByteDance, but the content makeup of the feed will likely change as it adapts to trends in American user preferences and receives updates.
"The algorithm has been the secret sauce for TikTok ever since it got started," Timothy Edgar, a computer science professor at Brown University and a former national security official, told ABC News. "U.S. TikTok will start with that success, but now will be able to make tweaks to it."
The deal affords U.S. TikTok oversight of content changes, allowing the new company to "safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem and have decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation," TikTok said.
Experts who spoke to ABC News highlighted the uncertainty surrounding potential content changes available to new ownership.
Under the agreement, TikTok will form a new U.S. joint venture controlled mostly by American investors that include software giant Oracle Corporation and private equity firm Silver Lake, each of which will retain 15% ownership of the new company, TikTok said. The remaining share of the company will be controlled by ByteDance and its affiliated investors, with ByteDance retaining 19.9% of the firm.
The fate of the algorithm relates to concerns voiced by experts about possible bias in the app's content feed. Some of the investors, including Oracle Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison, are longtime allies of Trump, raising the possibility of a pro-Trump bias, some experts said.
"Given that the companies and individuals that are a part of the deal have very close ties to the Trump administration, it begs the question of whether we're trading one form of undue state influence for another," Sarah Bauerle-Danzman, a professor who specializes in national security and business investment at Indiana University, told ABC News.
"If the president is unhappy with things that go viral on the platform, they might get a lot of pressure to suppress that kind of content," Bauerle-Danzman added.
Oracle did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment.
Speaking in the Oval Office in September, Trump joked that he would make the platform "100% MAGA," before rebuking such concerns. "Everyone is going to be treated fairly. Every group, every philosophy, every policy will be treated very fairly," Trump said.
Anupam Chander, a law and technology professor at Georgetown University, said the popularity of TikTok in the U.S. reflects general approval of its current algorithm, meaning the new owners could upset users if they make significant changes.
"Many people clearly like what the algorithm is showing today. They don't want that algorithm to start pushing things they don't want to see or the new owners' agenda," Chander said. "We don't know what the new owners will change."
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